Raising awareness against fake news to protect democracy: the myth of Islamophobia in Trump's speech

ABSTRACT

Fake news is being disseminated rapidly and it is discussed constantly on social media through “likes”, sharing and comments. Fake news undermined the contribution of media and gives space to powerful institution and specific parties to promote their policies as given. In this paper, I discuss that in order to understand in depth the fake news/disinformation, a phenomenon that threats democracy, each citizen should have the ability to connect the context, the words, the image and the extralinguistic features in order to “read” behind the lines and identify the intentions that are hidden. To support this claim, a specific excerpt from fake news by Donald Trump is being analysed thoroughly with the combination of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Social Semiotics (SS). From the analysis it is shown that not fake news merely, but rather elaborated myths are being constructed which attribute characteristics in social groups, in order to serve specific goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Fake news
• democracy
• disinformation
• fake news
• myths
• media literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Konstantinos Sipitanos

Konstantinos Sipitanos holds a MA degree in Linguistics (2016) and a PhD degree (2020) in Language Teaching and Participatory Research Methodologies from University of Crete (UoC). He works as researcher and adjunct faculty teaching staff in the Departments of Philosophy and Social Sciences in the UoC and as a fellow tutor in the Postgraduate program Contemporary Linguistics Tensions for Educators in the Hellenic Open University. He has published articles in EAR Journal, Punctum International Journal of Semiotics, IJEL Studies and EURO-JCS (to appear). He has also participated in research projects funded: a. by EU under the Erasmus+ actions such as CICADA and BackpackID and b. by state organizations such as Disseminating Democracy in Schools and the Principals discourses in school settings. His main research interest concern: literacies (media, critical and digital) literacy, social semiotics, critical discourse analysis, participatory action research and students’ voice.